


stars slide down to reach the end

by sandpapersnowman



Category: Alien: Covenant
Genre: Comfort, F/M, Robot Feels, Robot/Human Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-22
Updated: 2017-10-22
Packaged: 2019-01-21 04:26:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12449658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sandpapersnowman/pseuds/sandpapersnowman
Summary: He finds his mind wandering a lot lately. Thinking about where he might be if he wasn't on Origae 6.





	stars slide down to reach the end

**Author's Note:**

> title from marina & the diamonds' Shampain
> 
> so! if you're following me for walter/daniels content (more specifically, probably, little happy ending), you probably noticed i vanished off the face of the earth! thats because we live in shitfuck nowhere and our internet setup changed to none wifi with left bullshit, and since i mostly write in google drive, i was cut off from everything i was working on.
> 
> thanks to everyone for being so patient though!! i'm not fully back yet but i'm back to writing at least :') anyway take this fic

David had been convincing. Until he knew for sure Walter wouldn't be staying, he was all soft words, gentle touches, loving looks -- Walter _could_ have stayed, he knows, and he would have been happy. He would have been so, so happy.

But he couldn't do that to Daniels. He couldn't stay with him. She might never feel for him like David does, or even comprehend _how_ Walter feels (because God, he does, somehow, dulled and muted but _there_ ), but she doesn't deserve to go to a new planet with no one. Tennessee, sure, but his idea of a healthy grieving process is counting shots until he can't anymore -- he'd worry too much about Daniels falling down the same path, going too far, hurting herself.

"Walter?" Daniels whispers.

He's distracted himself.

"Sorry," he says.

She smiles at him.

(It's nothing like David's smile, either; Walter understood his, and loved it, and he's felt David's teeth against his in heated kisses he didn't know he'd ever needed. Daniels smiles too tight, holding back pain and emotion Walter can't even imagine, but still _comforted_ by his presence.)

"You've been getting zoned out more often, Walter," she says, but it's not scolding or mean, just an observation. "Are you alright?"

He smiles back at her, a now-practiced smile that he keeps his teeth out of because it reminds them both of David, only one corner of his mouth pulled up to look just that much less mechanically precise. Like he's sitting on the steps of a wood cabin as her equal.

"I'm wonderful."

He squeezes her hand tighter in his. (Not inhumanly strong, like he's capable of, but protectively strong.)

"Are you thinking about David?" she asks softly. "Because it's okay to. I know leaving him was difficult, even if he... Even when he did what he did."

She doesn't have to say it, she knows. Walter never stops thinking about it. He blames himself, sometimes, because he knew from the moment they stepped into the city that David was _wrong_ , was _off_ , and he could have kept them all safe if he had just kept David in sight. If he hadn't hoped that somehow David would see how much they all meant to Walter and would preserve them, for his sake.

"I am," he admits.

Daniels' thumb rubs over the back of his hand.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

That could be therapeutic; he knows that people typically benefit from talking about their issues, to say it out loud and make their thoughts tangible if nothing else.

"Not right now," he decides. "Someday, probably, but..."

He shrugs, and Daniels nods. She understands, she always has and always will; even if she bottles everything up until the last second, she knows as well as he does that it has to come out eventually, and they'll be there for each other when it does.

"I'm glad you're here," she tells him, in case he's thinking any differently. "I wouldn't have made it this long without you."

He doesn't need tone analysis programming or a read on her pulse through his hand to know she's not lying. Daniels has never lied to him.

"I wouldn't have made it this long without you, either," he confesses. "And I'm glad to be here."

Daniels kisses his cheek. There's none of the heat to it David's mouth always had, despite her temperature being physically warmer than his. He leans into it, but not desperately like he had with David -- there's no _need_ there, like he'll crumble to dust without it.

Even better than that, something as simple as a chaste kiss makes him feel like he could stay here forever, hand locked in hers, looking out over the lake and breathing in the clean, untouched air, and if they listen close enough, they can hear the noise from the colony a few miles out, machinery whirring as it builds housing and prepares land for farming.

It's comfortable. It's something he's never thought about having, but it feels like _home_.

He threads their fingers together.

David loved him. He loved David, too, but... It was different than this. He loved David because he was someone that understood him, and how _exactly_ he thought, and felt, and functioned. He loved David because David wanted him so badly and knew the things that Walter wanted and never could have experienced without him.

Is that love, though? He doesn't doubt David's love for him, or his own minor devotion to David. But had that been _real_ love?

Daniels leans against him. A breeze picks up -- well, what counts for a breeze on Origae 6 -- and the water below them whites and froths in the wind. He feels Daniels' hair whipping against his shoulder, longer now than it had been when they arrived.

Daniels sighs against his side. She's enjoying the breeze, too, eyes shut even as it threatens to knock them both right off their porch. Content, holding onto him, like she knows he'd keep her grounded in any storm, environmental or internal.

...Maybe _this_ is what love is.


End file.
